Saturday - still tweaking this, want to be able to post pictures so everyone can continue to see what life is like down here. Weird experience yesterday! We held the funfair last night at school, and my 6th graders did balloon creations (wiener dogs, hats, flowers were the big sellers). Just before we were leaving home for the fair, this horrendous howling noise blew up just as the rain began. I went outside to look for what was causing the noise, and all I could tell was it was coming from the jungle at the end of the street - it wasn't quite natural enough for me to believe it was all natural, though, and not quite mechanical enough for me to believe it was from the canal.
I remembered reading in Pathway Between the Seas by David McCullough (the 900+ page, excellent history of the canal) that those who moved here were often shocked, frightened, and just plain freaked out by the suddennes and otherworldliness of the storms that blow up down here. So I chalked it up to that.
By the way - we made a whopping $25.25 with our balloons. That should get us a few more whiteboard markers...
Cost of gas today: $3.24 per gallon (down from $3.56 last week)